A team from Emporia State University will help community colleges in Maine continue to offer high-quality information technology courses to students.
Staff in Learning Technologies, part of ESU’s Information Technology department, recently were selected by the Maine is IT! consortium of Maine’s seven community college to evaluate more than 100 IT programs offered online and on the campuses.
Maine is IT! is a statewide effort to address the critical and growing need for skilled information technology workers across many Maine industries. It's an effort that involves business and industry, trade associations, and government agencies working in close partnership with Maine's seven community colleges to help move Maine forward.
The program was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant or TAACCCT. ESU’s learning technologies department will receive around $34,000 for the work.
TAACCCT is a program that Dr. Anna J. Catterson, ESU educational technology coordinator is familiar with. From 2013 to 2015, Catterson was director of the IT Institution at Butler Community College in Kansas. During that time, she oversaw a $2.7 million TAACCCT grant.
Based on Catterson’s previous work with TAACCCT, she and Dr. Rob Gibson, ESU director of learning technologies wrote the proposal to evaluate courses for the Maine program.
“The TAACCCT program, funded by the Department of Labor, is a way to ensure that colleges are offering courses and programs that are meeting labor market demands,” Catterson explained. “Some of the courses we will review are new courses that have been designed for job growth.”
Gibson and Catterson along with Joseph Kern, instructional designer, and Mark Summey, technology support consultant in IT, will evaluate the Maine academic program. The evaluation includes reviewing course syllabi, activities, assignments, assessments and exams as well as offering recommendations for improvements.
The 113 courses for review are offered at seven different Maine community college campuses and include introductory and advanced computer languages and computer forensics as well as courses on design software and network security.
“The partnership with the community college system of Maine is exciting, and our team is looking forward to the course review process,” Catterson said. “Building relationships with other educational institutions allows us to foster innovative ideas to share and explore with our colleagues at ESU.”